It is desirable to transmit program and commercial content to radio and television broadcasters over standard communications channels. Prior to Internet transmission methods, this process was accomplished by one-way audio or audio/video transmission methods using a variety of techniques. Principal among these are 1) analog and digital telephone networks based on copper wire, coaxial cable, fiber optics, or microwave transmission, or 2) satellite point-to-point transmission. Such transmissions may be used to convey radio and television programs, radio and television commercials, broadcast news programming, sports programming, and special events.
Existing radio and television broadcast network technology has heretofore been limited to a one-to-many distribution paradigm. In their earliest form these networks were comprised of dedicated telephone lines that interconnected network origination points to individual radio, and later television stations. These were later replaced by coaxial cable networks and later microwave relay links. More recently, analog and digital satellite distribution technologies have been employed. These methodologies are unidirectional and have no internal capability for bidirectional operation.
Satellite distribution methodologies are dominated by protocols designed specifically for the dissemination of digitized audio and video signals unidirectionally. This method is designed for one-to-many distribution as are the older telephone coaxial cable and microwave approaches, which are not cost efficient for single point or one-to-one applications.
Although approaches such as those described above are typically sufficient for the particular purposes for which they were designed, they suffer certain deficiencies when viewed from the perspective of unitary, customized or virtual broadcast network applications. What is needed is a communications system that enables the simultaneous bi-directional transmission of data streams of voice, music, video and/or audio content in one-to-one broadcast applications.